


A Queen and her Thief

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 03:20:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2093754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eddis is a new queen, Eugenides a new thief. Neither are entirely sure of their position, but they are sure of each other. What might a true Thief steal for his Queen?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Queen and her Thief

"Gen," she called, her voice as normal as she could manage considering she couldn't see her own hand in front of her face. "Eugenides. I know you're in here, stop hiding."

The scrape and flare of a flint and tinder and a candle sputtered the dark temple into murky relief. Helen -- Eddis -- blinked twice and stepped forward, mindful of the uneven flagstones.

Her cousin was curled under the altar, lean and miserable in clothes two sizes too big. A soldier's tabard hanging loose over a thief's lanky frame. A shadow beneath his right eye that didn't shift with the flickering light.

"I can't give them back," he said. "They're on the altar already."

"I know. And," She settled herself onto a stone bench, pointedly not looking at him, "I don't care."

He snorted, loud and irreverent. "Of course you don't. I never thought you would."

She frowned up at the marble statue of Hespira. "Why, then?"

Eugenides unfolded himself, stretched into his lean limbs and came to sit beside her. 

"They came to you, about me, didn't they?"

She arched an eyebrow as she turned to look at him. He wasn't usually one for stupid questions, and she told him so.

He laughed. "What did you tell them?"

"What do you imagine I told them?"

His laugh this time was brighter, more his own. "That if they couldn't keep their valuables to themselves, it was no concern of yours?"

"And do you imagine that gems and baubles are the only things of value to be stolen?"

The thing about her cousin was that he never made the same face twice. Not unless it was an act, and she knew all of those intimately. The expression on his face, now, was wholly new to her. He heard her, he understood. His was the face of a boy pretending to be a man pretending to be a boy and relieved beyond measure that the cousin whose life and opinion he valued beyond earthly treasure was worthy of his estimation.

Because no, Eddis told him with a look, trinkets weren't her concern. Loyalty, opinion, steadfast trust. Those were the things she valued, the things that no one but a true Thief could steal. Could steal for her or from her. Thank the gods she didn't have to wonder which way her thief leaned.

With his tired head on her shoulder -- complaining all the while that her tough leather jerkin had been more comfortable than this scratchy cloth-of-gold and silver thread and pointily-bejeweled nonsense -- he told her what he'd learned.

"You see, there was this mortal man called Hamiathes..."

**Author's Note:**

> Comment fic originally posted [here](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/542976.html?thread=77097728#t77097728).
> 
> Theme = pre-canon. Prompt: Queen's Thief, Eddis + Eugenides, the first time the court came to her crying for his blood


End file.
